Why is it that in china more English premier league matches are shown than in England itself?

Question

i recently ordered sky sports for the football and i done some research and it shows about 138 matches a season, plus the 48 of setanta the equals about half the matches played. why is it possible in asia to watch every single game with one provider and at a much cheaper price. i understand that in England the demand and competition for rights is more but we must at least be able to view any game should we wish. right? or am i missing something?

Answer 1

The rise of Rupert Murdoch's SKY satelite TV coincided with Nick Hornby's 'Fever Pitch', the 1990 world cup and the general gentrification of the game. Lifetime fans being priced out of attending live matches and a vast influx of new middle class fans who suddenly wanted to watch games, but didn't neccasarilly want to share a stand with the scary men in Burberry (and the establishment of the Premiership) led the TV rights becoming a for more lucrative proposition than they had been previously.

Advertising space in a Premiership or England game is now more costly than pretty much anything else, and the Premier League is prepared to sell to the highest bidder in the UK. The BBC can't afford it, SKY pays a phenomenal amount, Setanta are willing to pay through their teeth to establish themselves in the market and don't want to share even highlights packages with terrestrial broadcasters, so there is little money around for 'extra' (ie non-top 4 games). However foreign rights are still (relatively) cheap.

It's been like this for ages though, I remember visiting Sweden in the eighties and being astonished that they had three English (old) first division games per week on their terrestrial TV, when we had none.

Simply. It's too bloody expensive here. Not so much over there.

Oh, and Chelsea and Man U have been agressively marketing at Asia for years.

Answer 2

Well don't blame them the English league is one of the best.

Answer 3

yeah id say its to get them to go to the game because we get all the games in america...

http://z10.invisionfree.com/Football_New...

http://newcastleunitedthebeatles.blogspo...

Answer 4

Chances are they want more people going to the games so they may block local tv rights. MAYBE. I know they used to do that in my country (Jamaica) at one point to get more support at the stadiums rather than everyone just sitting back and watching on tv for free

Answer 5

Which fan base would provide you with more money?

60M people living in the UK?

or the potential 1.1Billion people in China..?

It's all about the money $